After another spree killing, we’re left, again, to wonder why

Aug. 1, 1966. Charles Whitman barricaded himself in a clock tower on the University of Texas campus and began shooting. He killed 16 people, wounding 32 others. If you were born during the last of the baby boomers like me, then you remember this as your first memory of a spree killer, though we hadn't yet coined the term. It was unprecedented. A bizarre, random, once-in-a-lifetime nightmare. It had never happened before. And it seemed unthinkable that it could ever happen again.

And now, like everyone, my soul trembles as I watch my television and read the Net about Aurora, Colo. James Holmes? I'm angry, but I might as well be angry at a sheep.

Last Sunday, I was reading E.J. Montini, my favorite columnist in the Arizona Republic. His research told me of 22 spree killings in the past 13 years, if you start counting from Columbine. That's 1.69 spree killings per year. I'm guessing I have a lot of company when I tell you that I was stunned by this statistic. I was a little depressed to think I had managed to "normalize" spree killings in such a way that I lost count of the events.

Yes, there has always been evil in this beautiful-but-broken world. But, I'm thinking more and more that this particular sickness is unique to our current version of the modern, Western civilization human experience. I make myself imagine: In, say, 1432, in a tavern in Verona, Italy, did a patron ever simply rise from his grog, draw his sword and start hacking random customers to death? I don't think so.

A colleague hears my fantasy rhetorical question, and points out that everyone else in the tavern would have been "packing steel," too. If a late Middle Ages spree killer had begun such a rampage, the other folks in the bar would have put a stop to it forthwith. He's got a point. But my speculation remains: Spree killers are unique to this time, place and culture.

Another colleague wonders aloud to me about what particularly is going in "the masculine." Meaning, are there systemic and cultural factors effectively "breeding" this kind of sickness in occasional men? My first thought was to notice that I know of no spree killer who was female. My next thought was, if I assemble a mental list of the worst of "the masculine" - violence, aggression, runaway testosterone, misogyny, machismo, narcissism, bullying - well, such men do engender a lot of pain and chaos in the world. Not to mention they are jerks. But they are not spree shooters. Which is not to say that my colleague is not onto something. Only to say that I can't immediately put my finger on an argument why the phenomenon of spree killers is on the radical rise.

Still another friend says there has always been this kind of pathology in the world, but that the ready availability of guns creates an opportunity for this form of "crazy" that simply wasn't the same when we wielded only swords, knives, arrows, axes and clubs. Still not buying it. Not counting the Colonial days of flintlocks, ready ownership of modern guns (revolvers, repeating rifles) has been around since the Old West. Certainly in the first half of the 1900s. But no spree killers.

No, this is happening to us now. And, for me, a large part of the terror of it is not being able to explain it.

My most pressing thought is how I keep seeing those men and women who strap on dynamite vests and take a bus ride in Jerusalem. When those events have happened, I have often quaked at what must be an unspeakable despair. What else could explain such a blithe, random and calculated evil? But, even this argument breaks down. James Holmes a terrorist? Nope. Terrorists have political agendas.

Ever hear Harry Chapin's song "Sniper"? It was written about Charles Whitman, and the UT shooting. It's an utterly creepy interpretation of this madness. Spree killers possess an unspeakable rage. Spree killers no longer know they exist, yet they insist on being seen and heard.

How do I know I exist?/ Are you listening to me?/ The first words he spoke took the town by surprise/ One got Mrs. Gibbons above her right eye/ I will be, I will be, I will be.

You can listen to this song live on YouTube. It's not for the fainthearted. But it might be as good an explanation of what's happening as anything I've yet heard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB5_N-D5sv0)/

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.